Blue
by Ravenclaw42
Summary: Episode 5. Hiro reflects on his partner in heroism while waiting for rescue in the parking garage.


Disclaimer: I do not own Heroes or its characters and I'm not making money off this. Just ego points.

Author's Note: Can I say again how much I adore these two guys? Because as freakin' mindblowingly awesome as Hiro is -- the Hiro-Ando partnership is almost more freakishly perfect. I would totally ship them as a pairing, but for now I'm stuck on how perfect their friendship is. I hate to call it a hero-sidekick dynamic, because that feels like it undermines their equality as people. So here's a little vignette on one of my all-time favorite scenes, from the end of episode five, "Hiros," which brings Hiro down a little in the most perfect, subtle way -- he's defeated by the mundane. It's the moment when he realizes that he didn't just want Ando to come along for fun -- he _needs_ Ando. And for a self-proclaimed superhero, that's a big deal.

**-----------  
Blue  
-----------**

Hiro didn't remember the last time he'd felt this miserable. What did they call it here in America? He felt... blue.

It hadn't been so hard to find the car. Hadn't been so hard to get out of the diner, or to work around the language barrier with the Flying Man. Cheating at the casino? Getting thrown out of a van? A good life lesson, and despite the bruises... well... it had been _cool._ Who could honestly say they'd been thrown out of moving van, or stopped time to cheat at poker? Who could say they'd hitched a ride with a man who could _fly?_

It really hadn't been that hard to travel by himself. Things had just seemed to... fall into place. As if he'd always been meant to be there, doing exactly what he was doing. The fact that it was so easy _had_ to mean he was doing it right. Right?  
_  
"I'll probably save the world faster now,"_ he'd muttered at Ando's retreating back, and so far, it was true.

Well. Not entirely.

Hiro sat glumly in the driver's seat of the blue Nissan Versa. He'd been so stubborn about getting this car. Why did it matter so much? He couldn't remember why it had mattered so much at the rental place. The comic had shown them in driving a blue Nissan Versa, but -- if he hadn't seen the comic he would have gone for something cheaper, he was sure. He would have let Ando make the choice because Ando was the one driving. Ando was the one handling the money, getting them where they needed to be. Where Hiro _said_ they needed to be. And as long as he stayed out of casinos, Hiro knew without a doubt that Ando was the right person to be in charge of things like money and transportation, because Hiro was terrible with money.

And he couldn't drive.

Such a simple defeat. You didn't really need to drive in Tokyo. If everyone drove there, the way they did here in America, there would be no room for people. Hiro knew the ins and outs of public transportation, knew who he could carpool with on any occasion -- which had been limited to Ando, pretty much, for the past three years. No one else would put up with him anymore. But Ando didn't mind his talk of space aliens and alternate dimensions, because they'd grown up together, gone to school together, worked together for so long, and... it just... it just didn't matter.

It didn't matter. Or it hadn't. Until it turned out to be real, all of it real, and Hiro had a _superpower_ and maybe that meant that it did matter now. All those things Hiro had chattered about for years -- Ando couldn't just let them go over his head anymore, in one ear and out the other. Ando had to take them seriously, too. Hiro hadn't really stopped to think that, to the one without a superpower... maybe being friends with a hero wasn't such a great thing.

But that wasn't how it worked in the stories!

Hiro made a face and hit the steering wheel in frustration, palm out. For a split second the horn deafened him and he pulled both his hands back as if the wheel were red-hot. Wide-eyed, he glanced back to see if anyone had noticed, but there wasn't anyone else in the garage.

After a few minutes to let his racing heart recover and the burn of embarrassment recede from his face, he opened the door -- very quietly -- and stepped out. He closed the door gently, went around to the back, opened the trunk. Looked at his suitcase like heíd never seen it before.

What could he do? Bending time couldn't make him suddenly know how to drive. He was tired from all the adrenaline-fueled excitement of the past few days. He was hungry, the waffles from the diner having burned off maybe an hour ago. He was terribly, awfully alone. Trapped by his own inadequacies. The keys were heavy in his hand.  
_  
"If you're so miserable here then go back to Japan."_

_"I'm not miserable here. I'm miserable with you!"_

He'd never thought he would miss Ando this much.

Heaving a sigh, Hiro sat on the edge of the trunk, far enough back that his feet didn't quite touch the ground. He rolled the keys in his hand, exuberance of that morning completely gone. The comic had told him what to do up through going to Las Vegas. And everything after that had fit together so perfectly that it felt like a comic in itself -- the casino, the thugs, getting _thrown out of a van_, which he was still not getting over anytime soon, because, well -- that had been the _best._ Even if it had hurt more than he'd thought it would.

But now there wasn't _anything_. He'd been afraid to tell Ando that the comic ended at Vegas, because it was so obvious that Ando was still skeptical, and if he knew that Hiro really didn't have a clue what he was doing -- well. But maybe that was the problem. Why had he asked Ando to come, anyway? Not just to drive. Not just as a witness to Hiro's powers, living testament to their reality. Not just as a sidekick, although maybe that was all Hiro had been thinking of him as.

Sidekick. No, that was unfair. Now that he thought about it, it was unfair in the stories, too. It must be a terrible thing to be a sidekick, the person whose entire purpose in life was to cheer someone else on, never really doing anything on their own.

Did... did Ando think that Hiro didn't really care about him? That Hiro just thought of him as a sidekick?

But there was something else in the stories, too, and that was the unspoken fact that the sidekicks never resented the heroes and the heroes never looked down on their companions. Because the hero-sidekick dynamic was just a label to categorize those with powers and those without. It never really mattered.

Friendship mattered. So it wasn't that all Hiro's inane chatter over the years was suddenly important -- it was that all his inane chatter needed to remain _unimportant._ Before being "the one with superpowers," he need to be the best friend. Even if saving the world was his first priority, it didn't mean he had to be a completely different person to do it.

Ando needed to know that time-and-space-bending-Hiro was still the same old Hiro from past years of growing up, discovering themselves, surviving school, surviving a crummy, crowded office... still the same old Hiro who had been his friend for longer than they both cared to remember.

Hiro let himself lose track of time. It was nice to do that again for a little while, actually, just like the old days before he'd gotten too obsessed with staring at clocks, willing them to move. He tossed the keys up and down, swung his feet, thought about anything and everything. It all led back to saving the world. And that led back to where he was. And that... that led back to Ando.

His neck itched from sweating in the suit jacket and he was just thinking of taking it off when he heard something that wasn't another car rumbling past, wasn't another set of determined, fast-paced heels clacking past or another set of boots thudding on the level above. Familiar footsteps and the creak of new shoes that reminded him of the office, same as the itch on his neck.

And for all his superpowers and his mission to save the world, he felt like such a child. All he could think was, Is Ando mad at me? What should I say?

He looked up and met Ando's eyes and thought, _I'm sorry. I think you were right. I shouldn't have said what I did._

But there was understanding in Ando's face and he didn't even glance at the keys in Hiro's hand. No recrimination. Just a silent message that maybe, Hiro hoped, said both _I'm sorry_ and _I forgive you.  
_  
Under the blue tint of the fluorescent lights of the parking garage there were no heroes and no sidekicks. Just two friends, recognizing their own hopelessness and laughing at it. Friends rescuing each other from themselves.

"I guess we call the artist again, then," said Ando.

Hiro began to smile.


End file.
